So I'm at a point now where I need to create some custom statics. I need to build them around a certain layout I have in my level so I need to export the retail meshes and rebuild that portion in Maya. I've gotten as far as being able to extract BSA archives and get the meshes into NifSkope, and exported as OBJ but:

1.) Can I combine pieces in NifSkope? The first mesh I've started on has six pieces which I've exported individually and imported to Maya

2.) The problem is, I can't combine them in Maya. I get an unspecified error when I try to use polyUnite and the operation fails. Doesn't matter which combination of pieces I select. I think i must have something to do with the error I get when I import the OBJ files:

WARNING: Nodes with illegal names were detected. They will not be supported in future versions of Maya

In the meantime, I am grouping them which is a suitable workaround, but still requires and extra step of pressing the "up" arrow everytime I want to move a group. Not to mention that it's unnecessarily time consuming to have to export/import so many pieces.

You can combine meshes in Nifskope, but you can't do anything fancy like merging vertices. I also don't think you can bring over the collision when combining various nif files, but I could be wrong.

If you were to combine two nifs, all you would need to do is copy the NiTriShape (or multiple NiTriShapes) from nif 1 into nif 2. You can simply click on the NiTriShape you want, hit Ctrl+C, then go over to nif 2, click on the BSFadeNode, and hit Ctrl+V. Pretty easy!

I can't suss that. All six pieces are under the same fade and when I copy one trinode and paste it to the fade, it just adds a new identical entry to the end of the list.

But I figured out that I can export with the fade node highlighted and that pushes out every piece into one OBJ. Still can't combine them in Maya though. I can live with this workflow though. Much better than having to import each pice of a mesh one by one.

I think I didn't explain properly. I'm not trying to combine two different nif files. When I open a single nif file; in this case, dweplatbgcorout01, I am greeted with six different pieces under the same fade node. Previously I was exporting each trishape individually. Now I have figured out that I can just export the fade and each piece goes into one OBJ. But even doing this after importing to Maya there are six different poly shapes that I still can't combine. But as previously mentioned, I can still group them which is acceptable for the time being.

Each piece comes in with the correct pivot point and rotation, here they are pulled apart so you can see that each piece is a separate poly object.

http://i.imgur.com/jwppVsg.png

the main reason a nif, especially a vanilla nif, has multiple NiTriShapes, is because they have different and sometimes unique texture maps, ie UV's.

i'm really not understanding exactly what you're doing. it sounds like you want to edit some existing meshes from the vanilla game.

you should be able to import the nif directly into maya. afaik, the maya niftools will allow you to do this.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/niftools/files/

edit: i should add that the niftools exporter will probably only work on certain versions of maya. I use max, the max niftools only work on 2010 -2012 . if you're on a subscription, then you may just have to svck it up and move to blender, which is a fantastic program. And has alot more people supporting it. and its, imo, a WAY better for modeling than maya.

you'll have to read the readme to find out how to install if you already haven't got the niftools installed in maya.

so you do not want to combine meshes unless you want to re-do their UV's. if you're modeling a house from scratch, you don't want to make it all one mesh, b/c the uv's will be too small and your texture maps will look horrible. you should be able to export different object with differnt uv's from maya.